“WHY DO WE MOURN DEPARTED FRIENDS?”
This hymn of holy comfort, by Dr. Watts, was long associated with a remarkable tune in C minor, “a queer medley of melody” as Lowell Mason called it, still familiar to many old people as “China.” It was composed by Timothy Swan when he was about twenty-six years of age (1784) and published in 1801 in the New England Harmony. It may have sounded consolatory to mature mourners, singers and hearers in the days when religious emotion habitually took a sad key, but its wild and thrilling chords made children weep. The tune is long out of use—though, strange to say, one of the most recent hymnals prints the hymn with a new minor tune.
Why do we mourn departed friends,
Or shake at death's alarms?
'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
To call them to His arms.
Are we not tending upward too
As fast as time can move?
Nor should we wish the hours more slow
To keep us from our Love.